I have decided to collect all of the “Encyclopedia” cookbooks by The Coastal Kitchen. They take up a huge amount of room on my cookbook shelves, but they’re well researched, extremely useful, and quite comprehensive – so worth it!
The newest cookbook in the series will be “The Encyclopedia of Italian Food: Over 350 Classic Recipes Celebrating Italian Traditions,” which arrives in bookstores in late April.
The publisher, Cider Mill Press, gifted me an advance copy of this Italian cookbook to preview, via NetGalley.
Chapters include:
- Pasta
- Entrees with Meat
- Entrees with Seafood
- Plant-Based Entrees
- Soups & Stews
- Pizza & Focaccia
- Breads
- Desserts
One of the best things about this series of cookbooks, is they offer just a brief introduction, and then dive right into the content immediately. Each recipe includes the yield, the active time and the total time. Measurements are given in American/Imperial, by weight, cups and ounces.
I’m delighted to see an entire chapter devoted to plant-based (vegetarian and vegan friendly) Italian main dishes!
The Pasta chapter presents a few pastas I hadn’t heard of (Scialatielli, Lagane, Busiate, Strangozzi, and many more) as well as familiar dishes involving orecchiete, ravioli, Puttanesca or gnocchi. There are over 80 recipes in the Pasta chapter alone, but with only 15 color photos illustrating them.
The Meat chapter features dishes that use chicken, pork, lamb, tripe, rabbit, beef, boar, veal, and so on.
As I’m exploring the Entrees with Seafood chapter, I notice that the chapter headings and page illustrations of the book are color coded to help the reader remember which chapter they’re in. The seafood recipes utilize mussels, calamari, tuna, cuttlefish, anchovies, sardines, stockfish, mullet, trout, and more.
There are intriguing variations on eggplant parmigiana in the Plant-Based chapter, some frittata recipes that might be nice for breakfast or lunch; pizza and risotto; plus polenta dishes that sound yummy. I wish there was a photograph of the Torta Pasqualina so I could see what it is supposed to look like when I’m done cooking it. I’m also noticing that there isn’t any info on the recipes explaining the origin or history of the dish.
The Soups & Stews chapter offers minestrone; a lentil and chestnut soup that would be fantastic in autumn; an egg and asparagus soup I’m eager to try making; and a Tuscan kale soup as well as a Tuscan leek soup.
You’d easily be able to recreate the Italian finger foods and nibbles from the appetizers chapter, should you want to host an Italian themed wine or cocktail party. I’m scared to attempt the delicate fried zucchini blossoms, but I’d like to try. I’m pretty sure no cookbook actually needs a bruschetta recipe (it’s pretty easy to figure out, if you’ve ever eaten that) but since these Encyclopedia cookbooks are so incredibly comprehensive, of course that recipe is included here. The chapter includes a tasty looking fonduta (fondue) recipe that would be nice on a chilly winter night.
The pizza and focaccia chapter is full of tempting classics like Margherita and Quattro Formaggi pizzas; plus a spicy Pizza Diavola option; and an inventive zucchini blossom pizza. I’m intrigued by the unusual focaccia preparations and different hydration levels for the doughs you can choose between. I wish this cookbook had even a sentence of explanation to describe what something like “Tirot” is, sigh. Well, I can Google it or ask ChatGPT!
The Bread chapter offers many Italian breads I have never heard of, all of them sounding incredibly delicious! I wish there were pictures of the loaves so I know what they are supposed to turn out looking like – but then this already massive cookbook would have more pages, be even bigger and heavier! The few photos of bread in the chapter are not labelled, so I’m not sure if the photo refers to the recipe before it or the one after it, sadly. I’m curious why there’s a German sounding recipe, Schuttelbrot, in an Italian cookbook, so I looked it up – it’s because it’s from the South Tyrolean area of Northern Italy, which has German and Austrian influences. Perhaps this cookbook is meant for people who are already familiar with all the names of the dishes, not newbies like me!
The Desserts chapter offers tempting treats such as amoretti and taralli biscuits (cookies), biscotti, crostata, cannoli, and an intriguing entry called Pizza di Crema e Amarene. And yes, of course there’s a lemon sorbet and a tiramisu recipe.
I’m going to have to load up on tomatoes and 00 flour, and give this cookbook a place of honor in my kitchen. I’ll have a lot of terms and dish names to look up while I’m deciding what to cook from this excellent and thorough Italian cookbook.
Shop for “The Encyclopedia of Italian Food” on Amazon (affiliate link).
-Carrie
Cookbook Divas
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